Coleton, Detector Dog Handler

Coleton – Detector Dog Handler

I’m Coleton, I'm a detector dog handler at Grande Cache Institution.

I've been a CX (Correctional Officer) for 6 years now. I've always wanted to obtain a job that had to do with animals. And that was my goal getting into CSC (Correctional Service Canada) was to be a dog handler. So when I was given that opportunity, I was just ecstatic. I was so happy to be put in that position.

Diamond is a female black lab. She is the best partner that I've known. She's very excitable, very good at her job. And she makes my day to day that much better. She is just a very happy, excitable dog. She's always ready to go to work.

She's with me 24 hours a day. It is a full-time gig. I am responsible for her at work and also outside of work.

As much as she is a working dog, you do have to create a bond with your working partner. She has to trust you when you're putting her into all these positions that she may be a little uncomfortable with. She has to understand that you're going to be there through anything and that you're going to be there to catch her whenever she needs you.

We go to a morning briefing just to kind of see what our day is going to look like. If there's any preventative searching that needs to be done or any kind of intel searches. So that includes inmates, inmate cells, any area inside the institution.

Drone drops, we struggle a lot with out here because we're so secluded. So most of the drug introductions that we're seeing come from drone drops. So we're always doing recreational yard searches with the dogs and lots in the mail as well.

It's mostly narcotics. The dog is trained on firearms and ammunition as well. We don't have a lot of that in the institutions, thankfully. But mostly it's just drugs inside the institution that we search for.

It can be a novel odour. That is what they are supposed to do is kind of jolt back and forth and work in a zig zag pattern.

There's nothing better and rewarding than when Diamond does her job and she finds something either on the recreation yard, in the mail, in a cell, on an inmate. And she looks at me and we're in a live search situation. I can feel her heart rate rising just as much as mine does. And when the intel comes through and the source is correct and is confirmed that she's found something, it's an incredible feeling. Absolutely.

I'm extremely proud of my job, especially the work that I get to do with Diamond.

Every day is just tons of fun. Every day is going to be different and you get to challenge your dog in different ways every day, which brings them to a new level. So, you can't ask for more than that.